I have a Victoria BC tourism website that I get a fair amount of traffic to... but I want more. If I apply myself I can get on the first page of Google with my top competitor for a highly searched key phrase, but I would have to do some SEO work involving heavy use of anchored text, cleverly sculpted articles, ...etc. with "tourism victoria" in it. Tourism Victoria is the official institution of the Victoria BC tourism industry. If I decided to shape traffic towards my site by using their name as one of my key phrases could they launch some sort of legal action against me? I wouldn't beat them in the SERP's for that phrase (that could be impossible) so I would not be stealing traffic from them, but a quick nosy little search would show that I was using their name to climb up the Google ladder. I'm considering going ahead with this but I would love to hear your thoughts on this situation before I take the plunge.
I've done some work for a few companies to drive relevant traffic to their sites. I reckon you could adapt the method quite easily. For example a brewery wanted traffic. I researched all the beer festivals and wrote and published bookmarks each of which I added the brewery's link to as the sponsor for the bookmark. Both the brewery and the beer festivals benefited. Others I've published put the link more prominently to the company/event or product I was promoting. Would doing something similar, using all your competitor's urls for bookmarks and incorporating the keyword in the text and tag assist? Gauld, I hope this is not illegal... or stupid...
If I plan to visit the area I can GUARANTEE I'll NOT be searching for ""tourism victoria"" when I google to see what tourism spots are in the area. I tent to like to think that I am not a tourist even when I am... though from the looks of searching for alternate words, yeah, I guess I am not the norm. Maybe let them have that one, and shoot for the lesser ones? Sightseeing Victoria is pretty open, and is generally what I look for when traveling. I also tend to look for forums where people are talking about places they have been and liked (and more importantly disliked) as posts from real people seem to work better then some flashy page. I skip article sites, and tourist trap pages, as the tourism web is pretty circular like the porn sites I've been too. *shrug* not saying your page is... just saying I'm hoping it's not Focus on the end user, and when picking your keywords, don't use what your competitor uses, use what your end user does! (though, a good competitor is already doing that)...
I really like that Idea 1associate, basically blog and press release with them and their activities- events as the subject (which is fair game) and just have a publisher link back to my site. I like it! You give me much food for thought Qryztufre, and now that you mention it tourism sites can be trap like and that's why I strive for quality content... but I want to make a bit of money too. I'll look into "sightseeing victoria" and I think my site is very relevant to the term "tourism victoria". I'll take 1associate's advice and just not be blatant in aspiring for that key phrase i.e. I won't put the anchor text with that phrase in my sig or in press releases. It may take more time but it will be worth it. Both of you, great advice. Thank you.
You are right, my system would work much better with more obvious search terms ("visit Niagara Falls" came to mind). Recently, a three sentence bookmark I published on Snipsly.com which was a promotion of one of my adsense blogs, made page 2 of Google SER within a week and is currently page 1... the adsense blog (c 40 pages all treated the same per url) is also on page 1 in its own right but below snipsly and other articles (3 in the last count) are on page 2. Snipsly is a good find too as bookmark type articles don't need unique urls and link only to my websites or pages therein. In addition all the articles make additional adsense income and, if analysed, you should discover quirky intelligence relating to what titles work best you may not have discovered otherwise. Done well it doesn't take that long.